


Wake the Sleeper

by Stratisphyre



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Excessive and historically inaccurate flashbacks, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Memory Loss, Multi, Oral Sex, Post-Canon, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), Traipsing through history, Wing Grooming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-06 01:41:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21218468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stratisphyre/pseuds/Stratisphyre
Summary: Crowley was not prone to unwarranted feelings of concern. He was a rational occult being more than capable of sussing out the truly worrisome from the upsettingly mundane. One might say he rather prided himself on it. Keeping a level head had resulted in such minor victories as Chia Pets, the architecture of the National Theatre, and helping prevent the end of the world.This being said, arriving at the bookshop and finding it deserted most definitely warranted concern.Resigned to being unable to execute Aziraphale, Heaven decides to reeducate him instead.Crowley ain't having it.





	Wake the Sleeper

**Author's Note:**

> Holy cow I actually wrote canon instead of an AU. 
> 
> Please note that during the course of things, both Aziraphale and Crowley adjust their gender presentation.
> 
> I don't think there are any applicable warnings or anything potentially triggering, but do please let me know if I've missed anything.

Crowley was not prone to unwarranted feelings of concern. He was a rational occult being more than capable of sussing out the truly worrisome from the upsettingly mundane. One might say he rather prided himself on it. Keeping a level head had resulted in such minor victories as Chia Pets, the architecture of the National Theatre, and helping prevent the end of the world.

This being said, arriving at the bookshop and finding it deserted most definitely warranted concern.

_Especially_ on days when he and Aziraphale were already engaged to spend time together. There had been no lack of them since the failed Apocalypse, and yet despite the glut of each other’s company, no one had run screaming. (Yet). Standing in the doorway, glaring at the empty shop, Crowley had to wonder.

Crowley decided he was not going to worry. (Again: yet). He was going to act as a reasonable man-shaped occult being and bear in mind he and Aziraphale had gone years without seeing each other in the past. Once for over a century. Aziraphale was always going on about adding more items to his book collection; he’d probably run off to pick something up and lost track of time.

All the same, Crowley dodged slightly out of his way home to stop by Sotheby’s. Just in case. It was in Mayfair anyway. With no errant angels to be found, he settled with bidding up the prices on a few truly heinous examples of Dadaist art and headed home to use his sudden abundance of free time picking fights on the internet.

He returned the following day with similar results. (Nothing to be seen at Christie’s). And the day after (Chiswick, as though Aziraphale would be caught dead there after the debacle with the lot of port he’d tried to buy back in the 50s). The third day, he made a point of stopping by some of Aziraphale’s favourite rare book dealers and not-so-subtly interrogated every single person working to see if any of them had happened to notice someone poking about their first editions. His methods would’ve made certain anonymous military operatives green about the gills, and yet yielded nothing.

It was a Herculean effort to maintain his lack of worry. There a definitive lack of pacing through his flat that evening, though his legs twitched about beneath him on the couch.

Fortunately, in an unrealized reprieve to every other rare book shop in London, when Crowley returned to A.Z. Fell & Co. on the fourth day, he saw movement through the windows.

Given that he _hadn’t been at all worried_, Crowley strolled into the store at a casual and unrushed pace. He spotted Aziraphale behind the front counter, staring at his hands as though he’d dropped something but couldn’t quite recall what the something was or why it was important. Crowley’s aesthetically-appropriate heart thrummed out a relieved cough.

He then proceeded to lose his bloody mind.

“Where the ruddy fuck hav—”

A thunderbolt of holy power sent him rocketing out the bookshop doors, flinging him arse over teakettle a good thirty feet down the block until a painfully helpful lamppost got in his way.

He sat up with a groan and snapped his dislocated shoulder back into place. Despite the crowded streets, miraculously no one noticed Crowley’s unexpected flight and uncomfortably landing. He pushed himself to his feet with a wince of pain and miracle his ribs back into their correct places.

Aziraphale hadn’t been at auction. And considering Crowley hadn’t done anything recently to merit being smote down the fucking block, there were only left a few options as to what might’ve occurred during Aziraphale’s unexpected absence.

Crowley scowled at the sky, muttering a scathing ‘what the fuck did you do?’ before rising to go in search of his glasses, knocked off by the tumble. It’d hurt, but not as bad as it might’ve. He and Aziraphale had prepared for such circumstances.

Or, well, comparable ones at least.

The first time he’d ever been smote by Aziraphale had been in, oh, about 930 CE or thereabouts, and it had been at his own request. He could still remember the look on his angel’s face when he’d asked.

Aziraphale had exclaimed “Smite you?!” fifteen times at least before calming enough to hear out Crowley’s reasoning. It would have been gratifying how hesitant Aziraphale was to do him harm, if he’d left it at the one protestation instead of making Crowley badger him to get it done for well over an hour. The repetitive loop of denials quickly became deeply tiresome. “My dear, I couldn’t possibly!”

“It’s not as if you’ll discorporate me,” Crowley pointed out, also fifteen times. He anticipated it being extremely uncomfortable—especially the bit where he’d have to push all his bones back into place after the fact—but it was necessary in the long run. “Better for me to get used to it in case you get reassigned, and I’m stuck with some thatched seraphic wazzock.”

Aziraphale’s lips pursed, as though the previously delicious white they were drinking had soured in his cup. “Let us pray that ever happens.”

“Not a chance in Heaven,” Crowley said. “Come on. A few times. Get me used to how it feels. At least if I get holily punted across creation I can come to my senses with time enough to get away.”

“How do you know it won’t discorporate you?” Aziraphale insisted. This was, at least, new. “For all you know, I am an exceedingly competent smiter. I might banish you right back Downstairs.”

“Then it takes me a week to get myself a new corporation and I crawl right back Up Here,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale’s brow furrowed into piqued annoyance. “A week? It takes me almost two years _after _filling out the necessary forms.” Aziraphale, Crowley recalled, had experienced the inconvenience of it all over a century ago, when he’d accidentally tripped and landed face-first in the Submission of Bavaria.

“Nice bit of anger you’re working on,” Crowley said, “Care to use it?”

Aziraphale’s face smoothed out, though there was a flush at the apples of his cheeks from being thus called out. “Crowley. Need I remind you, should I smite you, I will have to fill out a report indicating the whys and whereofs, inevitably making my superiors wonder why a demon chose to come close to me not once, but multiple times?”

“Need I remind you the last time you submitted a report, you got jam all over the back page, misspelled Gabriel’s name three times and blamed the downfall of a Benedictine monk on an economic system which hasn’t been invented yet?” Capitalism. It was gonna be huge. Crowley was already looking forward to taking credit for it. “And no one so much as glanced at it?” Concrete proof their Arrangement was working as far as he was concerned, though Crowley would doubtless hear protestations about it for the next several centuries at least.

Aziraphale finished his wine, scowling at the empty cup before, finally, he sighed. “I don’t know why you’re dead set on this, but very well. If for no other reason than you finished the bottle.”

“Angel,” Crowley said with a delighted grin, “You help me with this, or I’ll—”

“You’d have a better time of it if you shifted the ‘or’ to an ‘and’ dear,” Aziraphale snipped. Crowley quirked an eyebrow. “‘Or’ is somewhat threatening, I find.”

“Fine,” Crowley nodded. “You help me with this, _and_ I’ll buy you another bottle.”

“And then drink that one as well, no doubt.”

“No doubt,” Crowley agreed cheerfully.

The smiting, it so happened, was intensely unpleasant, but not the most painful thing Crowley had experienced that century. The hangover he’d woken with after his first visit to the monastery of St. Gall had been far worse. After rearranging his liver and willing his kidney back into place, he pulled himself up to his feet, shook off the lingering, purely Aziraphalean sense of self-righteous irritation, and limped the entire fifty feet back to where he’d left his angel looking shocked at himself.

“Again.”

* * *

Three days later, once his ribs stopped aching, he decided to try again. Not through the front door, obviously. Whatever Heaven had done to his angel prevented him from simply sauntering in and demanding a return to the status quo. There was, however, a convenient crack in the foundation Aziraphale had never bothered to fix, perfectly sized for a petite snake. It meant changing himself into the smallest of his serpent skins, and even at a modest twenty-two-centimeters found it a tight squeeze.

Crowley slid through the space between the bricks and carefully maneuvered himself along the wall, alert for any sign of his angel. He flicked his tongue, picking up on the scent of Aziraphale, though it was faint. There was no movement. No voices. He was accustomed to Aziraphale’s fluttering about the shop, even in the absence of customers, and the uncharacteristic stillness put him uncomfortably on edge.

He emerged from the backroom, keeping to the space between one of the bookcases and the wall, and flicked his tongue again to scent Aziraphale properly. The taste in the air was off; Crowley’s brain tried to reconcile it, but all he could come up with was fruit picked too early off the vine, leaving chalky astringency which would’ve coated cheeks and tongue had he been human. It pervaded the shop, inescapable now Crowley noticed it. Fucking Heaven… what had Heaven forced him through?

“Oh.”

Crowley reared back, prepared for a smiting. He hadn’t noticed himself drifting out from behind cover, drawn to Aziraphale even when he knew what awaited. Aziraphale hadn’t seen him this small before, no, but there was no mistaking the Serpent of Eden.

At least, that’s what he told himself right up until Aziraphale leaned down and scooped him up, twining Crowley’s tiny body around his fingers. For the first time in their entire shared history, Aziraphale’s hands were cold. Crowley hated it.

“Aren’t you beautiful,” Aziraphale said. His voice might’ve been crooning, once. Now it was a bland recitation of facts. The sky was blue. Book pages were made of paper. Crowley was beautiful. Crowley’s tongue flicked out to taste the pad of Aziraphale’s thumb; he instantly regretted it—the not-quite-right taste of him stuck as boils on his skin. “I hadn’t realized you lived here. Did you arrive in my absence?”

_Yes_, Crowley thought. _Multiple times_.

“Keeping the mice at bay, I imagine,” Aziraphale continued. “Has this place had many mice?” As though he wasn’t aware Crowley had been taking care of any unwelcome pests for centuries. “What sort of snake are you, I wonder? You’ve a beautiful red belly… it reminds me of raspb…” He stopped short and frowned, his brow twitching in confusion. “I… can’t recall. Something quite red. It’s a lovely red, regardless.”

How desperate must Aziraphale be for company to carry on a one-sided conversation with a snake? Crowley _ached_ to shift back to his human skin. But if this was the only way to be close to Aziraphale, he’d take it. For now. Until he figured out how to fix whatever Heaven had torn asunder.

Aziraphale ferried him around the shop until, finally, he came to a pause at the front door. His hands began to shake.

“I should release you,” he said, tremulous. “It’s not fair to keep you this way.”

Crowley fluttered his tongue against the pad of Aziraphale’s thumb once again. _Keep me_, he thought as hard as he could. _Snakes like me aren’t indigenous to the area. I’m someone’s lost pet, forgotten or abandoned or whatever will appeal most to your heart. I’ll die if you put me outside. Winter’s not far off_.

Aziraphale reached for the door, then hesitated. Crowley’s small little heart was fair to bursting.

“No,” Aziraphale said to himself, firmly.

He opened the door and, with the incredible gentleness Crowley had known in the past, placed Crowley down in the small planter next to the street. Crowley rolled his eyes—at least, the serpentine equivalent. Why wouldn’t Aziraphale put him down in the first green patch he laid eyes on? Silly creature.

Crowley waited only until the bookshop door closed before slithering down the side of the planter—ignoring the terrified scream of a squeamish passerby—and back to the crack in the foundation.

Aziraphale stumbled across him the next day, curled up in a ball on a window ledge in a particularly pleasant sunbeam. Crowley did his utmost to look nonthreatening and sweet, as much as it galled him. The angel paused. Crowley lifted his head and flicked out his tongue.

_Keep me_. _I’m small and non-intrusive. You don’t want the mice getting at your books, do you? MY TUMMY REMINDS YOU OF RASPBERRIES, YOU JUST DON’T REMEMBER WHY YOU LIKE THAT. _

“Well, I suppose if you’re on your own as well, it wouldn’t _hurt_ to give you a place to call home.”

This time, when Aziraphale swept him up, he did not get placed back outside. He momentarily regretted the loss of his little pool of sunlight, but Aziraphale’s hands did seem slightly warmer than they had the day before.

Aziraphale set him up in a terrarium exactly the right size for a snake of Crowley’s proportions which simply happened to be in his labyrinthine storage room. It was initially uncomfortable bare glass, with no décor of which to speak, though Aziraphale did place it behind the front counter. Over the next hour, unearthed a few odds and ends to place inside; a few polished stones, a petrified branch which smelled of Eden, a clay bowl filled with water. It wasn’t the best enclosure in which he’d been a guest, but he’d take it over nothing at all, especially when it provided him such a clear view of the bookshop when he slithered up to settle at the top of the branch.

He always kept one eye on Aziraphale. It was the reason he was here, after all.

He fancied himself accustomed to Aziraphale’s habits. He enjoyed watching is angel idling around his shop, fussing with the books and scrolls, or making himself tea and basking in the sheer amount of paper-based knowledge he’d collected over millennia of greedy study. When he was at his leisure, he had a glass of wine in one hand and a book in the other, wonderfully content enough to make Crowley’s chest near-burst with affection. They could’ve easily spent hours together in such a way, tucked up against one other as Aziraphale read and Crowley annoyed him with the digital cacophony of cell phone game music.

Now Aziraphale stood still and cold as marble behind the counter, looking directly forward and blandly smiling at nothing. There was no puttering. No fretting about the best way to organize his collection and moving books from one side of the store to the other. Only ethereally unnatural stillness. All the “bad habits” he’d acquired over the years—his wonderful fidgeting and unnecessary breathing—gone. The only time he moved was when he glanced over at Crowley and allowed the smallest of smiles to grace his features.

No customers bothered them, and shortly before dusk, Aziraphale drew the blinds before collecting a number of candles from beneath the front desk. Crowley glowered at them; not a fan of candles, him. Especially not in the bookshop. He’d gotten well rid of them shortly after Adam had restored the shop. Aziraphale hadn’t complained. Had, in fact, helpfully handed over a few Crowley missed and watched with quiet understanding as he reduced them all to small puddles of wax on the pavement outside. Seeing them again—thick white things which obviously hadn’t seen much use—made Crowley want to spit.

When Aziraphale pulled back the carpet in the middle of the store and set them up around his summoning circle, the impulse intensified.

Crowley hadn’t been in the presence of the Metatron in. Well. A good long while. He did his best to make himself unobtrusive when the disembodied head appeared.

“Principality Aziraphale, former Guardian of the Eastern Gate.” The Metatron’s voice filled Crowley with cold dread, though he couldn’t say whether it was because he was afraid of discovery, or because he couldn’t help wondering what role the bastard had played in Aziraphale’s current condition. “You are reporting in as expected.” It sounded bored at the prospect, instead of impressed by Aziraphale’s commitment to a faction of ethereal beings who regarded him with contempt.

“Yes.”

“Has there been any sign of demonic activity in the area?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“A demon walked in through the door yesterday morning. I smote him back to Hell.” A pretty pathetic smiting, honestly. One might even think Aziraphale had held back. Crowley couldn’t detect any hint of dishonesty, though; perhaps Aziraphale believed he’d delivered his best effort.

“Can you describe the demon?”

Aziraphale’s face twitched, not-quite a frown, but the closest to actual emotion Crowley had detected outside of his meagre smile when he’d decided to give a petite snake a home. “He looked familiar.”

“You are an angel of the Lord. You have no truck with demons.” Something about the Metatron’s voice stuck in Crowley’s craw, sitting as a half-swallowed bite of food. “If he appeared familiar, then it is because you recognized an age-old hereditary foe and immediately knew your duty.”

Crowley wrinkled his nose and rolled his eyes.

Aziraphale’s voice gained a dreamy timbre when he responded, “Yes, that must have been it. Thank you for your counsel.”

“Continue your reporting schedule moving forward.”

“I shall.”

The communication ended and Aziraphale went about snuffing the candles one at a time, meticulously gathering them up to return them to their place beneath the counter. He returned to his unmoving post behind the counter once he finished.

Crowley lowered himself from his branch and curled into a ball atop one of his rocks, irritated. This ‘reporting schedule’ had to be reinforcing whatever they’d done to him. How was he supposed to break through to his angel if they constantly kept at it?

Aziraphale noticed his movements and turned.

“You need to be fed,” he murmured. His emotionless voice made Crowley shiver. “I shall have to see what it is snakes eat.”

_I’ll eat anything_, Crowley thought at him, _As long as I’m sharing it with you_.

Aziraphale looked around, as though only now realizing he was literally surrounded by knowledge. He disappeared in the direction of his biology section, leaving Crowley waiting in silence for a distracted hum of triumphant delight which never came.

When he returned, he dropped two terrified earthworms into the terrarium. A rush of cool air slid off his fingers, the warmth Crowley had detected earlier completely sapped away.

_Almost anything_, Crowley corrected. Was this what snakes of his size supposedly ate? He glowered at them until Aziraphale looked away, and then miracled them into the planter outside.

He tried not to feel pleased when Aziraphale glanced over at him, noted the absence of creepy-crawlies, and graced him with a barely-existent smile.

* * *

Aziraphale waited at his post all through the night, until it was time to open the shop the next morning. Crowley had considered sleeping, but something about the unnatural feeling of the living statue next to him kept real rest at bay. Aziraphale made no movement, nor any indication of thought or emotion. It was unnerving. Crowley spent the night slithering about the terrarium, moving from rock to branch to water bowl, circling the small enclosure for want of action and completely clueless as to how to address the situation. If he shifted back into his human body, the gig would be up, and he’d lose the chance of getting close to Aziraphale in this way again. And if Heaven continued to strengthen their hold on him without Crowley nearby, there’d be no chance at all of breaking it. No, he had to snap Aziraphale out of it, and the best way to figure out how was to stick close.

An hour into the morning, the first of Aziraphale’s customers walked through the door. An older man with a slight sneer pulling at his lip, as though someone was holding a small turd up beneath his nose for him to enjoy. He ignored Aziraphale and disappeared into the stacks.

Crowley looked at his angel expectantly. Surely the prospect of some undeserving mortal getting their grubby hands all over his books had to outrage his angel at least a little. He’d seen Aziraphale all but manhandle prospective customers out the door, when his particular brand of subtle rudeness failed to shoo them away.

Aziraphale remained immobile behind the counter, empty smile in place, until the man returned. The book in his hands was dusty, leather-bound and thick. Exactly the sort of book Aziraphale would sooner die than part with.

“Sixty pounds eight, please,” Aziraphale said, bland smile stuck in place.

The man handed over a small bundle of cash, accepted his change, and left without a word of thanks.

Crowley reared back so violently he fell off his perch.

Convince Aziraphale to smite him? Fine. It wouldn’t do permanent damage. Get him to give up all his fussy little habits? Less fine, but habits could be relearned. Fuck with his angel’s books? Turn him into an automaton who allowed humans to waltz out his door with centuries’ worth of treasures?

Heaven was lucky he had something more pressing on his plate.

Crowley flicked his tail and the door locked quietly. Aziraphale failed to notice, fortunately, and spent the remainder of the day behind the counter, waiting for the next thief to come and legally steal his possessions.

The silence was fine. It gave Crowley a chance to plan.

What had Aziraphale told him about this brainwashy nonsense? He tried to dredge up the memory of it. They’d been in Florence at the time, in a brilliant little trattoria not far from the river, settled at a quiet table in the back corner. A generous charcuterie board and an open bottle of red sat between them. Despite his protestations to the contrary, Aziraphale would likely finish the lot of it. Crowley never begrudged him his vices—encouraged them where he could—but he might’ve liked at least a chance at the montasio before it all disappeared.

Aziraphale had been yammering on about… something. Another angel, probably. He hadn’t always been the lone angel on earth, and he always took time to make sure Crowley was appraised of any inconvenient trespassers who might give them grief.

“…something something something wine something something something goat’s milk, something something… this is quite good, though. Thank you for sharing it with me.”

“I knew you’d pout if I hadn’t dropped by when I was in the neighbourhood.”

“It was simply wonderful of you to think of me.” He took another deep sip of his wine and smirked impishly. “Pity Sarathiel couldn’t be convinced to try this. I imagine it would do wonders for her disposition.”

“Could always slip her some. Loosen her up a bit.” Crowley avoided the temptation to waggle his eyebrows, but it was a near thing.

“Oh, even if I did, it’d never take. She’d toddle back up and submit herself for burnishment.”

Crowley’s forehead creased. “For what?”

“Not all angels appreciate Earth as I do. Their time down here is ill-suffered, and they’d prefer to wash their hands clean of it all together than allow themselves to be ‘tainted.’” His nose wrinkled at the word. “Thus, burnishment. I’m not intimately familiar with the details, but I hear it’s as though you’ve woken up from a dream once it’s done,” Aziraphale said. “Or so I’ve come to understand. You open your eyes, and everything is back to normal. The longer you’re awake, the dimmer the dream seems until it disappears all together.”

“And Heaven deems such a thing necessary?” Crowley asked. It sounded horrible, especially to him; years upon years of experiences gone? Knowledge of things he’d enjoyed simply dismissed away into nothing more than foggy recollection? And he’d thought his occasional trips to Hell were bad.

“It isn’t mandatory. Most angels who undergo burnishment do it voluntarily as a means of staying close to God,” Aziraphale told him. “Once the process is complete, it’s as though you’re a blank slate again. Back to the angel you were originally made to be. Some don’t even need the excuse of visiting Earth. I believe Uriel undergoes it once a century.”

Crowley wasn’t sure he wanted to know about angels who had willingly undergone such… extreme maintenance. “Would you ever do it, then?”

“What? Me?” Aziraphale drew back as though Crowley’s words had shocked him. “Of course not, my dear. Could you imagine?” He took a sip of wine, humming as he swirled it around in his mouth and pulled small wisps of breath in through pursed lips. Once he was done, he gently lay his hand atop Crowley’s. “Oh, no. I’m much happier down here being exactly as I am.”

Were Crowley more of a soppy prick, he might’ve told Aziraphale he felt the same. As such, instead, he contented himself with enjoying the pout that graced Aziraphale’s lips when he swiped the last bite of taleggio from under the angel’s fingertips.

* * *

Food, Crowley decided. Food was the first truly common ground he'd shared with Aziraphale. And there were few vices Aziraphale enjoyed quite as much as lingering over a decent morsel slipped past his lips. Food might snap him out of it. Make his time lived on Earth less a dream and bring it back into the forefront of his mind.

The night they'd first shared oysters, sitting across from each other with a jug of wine between them. Aziraphale, his tongue darting out to run along the bottom of the shell and then tilting his head back to suck down the meat and liquor, his throat bobbing only once before he hummed with obvious and obscene enjoyment. Similarly applying himself to something less innocent had been a fantasy Crowley had enjoyed many years afterwards, trotting it out through his not insubstantial imagination and polishing it up to add extra embellishments.

Yes. Food.

Aziraphale flipped over the sign to ‘closed’ and looked at the door with momentary confusion before brushing it off. About an hour later, thanks to a small miracle resulting in a nearly-infeasible misdirection, delivery from one of their regular sushi bars arrived directly at the bookshop doors. Crowley tilted up at the knock, watching the door eagerly as Aziraphale answered.

"Oh, I couldn't," he said in response to whoever stood on the other side. "Someone else must be missing their dinner."

It was a fruitless argument with an already-harried deliveryman. Inside less than a minute, Aziraphale and a paper bag were back at the front counter. He frowned into the bag.

_Remember_, Crowley thought at him, viciously. _Remember our little sushi bar in Hagi_._ How you asked the chef a million mortifying details about preparation and yelled at me for dipping my rice in the soy sauce. You drank two full bottles of sake, and I had to carry you home. You insisted you were in your right mind when you kissed me and asked me to stay._

It was suddenly hard for Crowley to remember anything else; Aziraphale's hands had clutched at his own and pulled him down onto the futon stretched out beneath him. His hands had been shaking then, as well, Crowley recalled. But they'd been infinitely warmer as he'd threaded their fingers together and brought Crowley's palm to rest against his heart.

"Stay," he'd whispered.

They’d done this before, but Aziraphale had never asked him to stay. Welcome him, when Crowley did, but never asked.

Crowley was suddenly greedy for the taste of Aziraphale on his tongue. He leaned over and pressed his lips clumsily against Aziraphale's. From then on he associated the taste of sake with the blissed-out sensation of Aziraphale’s lips caressing his own. He still kept bottles in his home for no other reason than to occasionally invite Aziraphale over to share them and relive the moment.

"Sober up," Crowley returned. "And I will."

Aziraphale giggled. "Oh, my darling. Must I?"

Crowley’s fingers trailed down his open yukata, eliciting a shiver. “Yes. Or I wait outside.”

Aziraphale pouted, but when Crowley stood to leave he hadn't gotten far. Aziraphale grabbed his ankle, and when Crowley turned around, his eyes were less liquor-glassed and back to their usual intelligent brightness.

“Stay,” he repeated.

“You sure about this, angel?”

“Very.”

Crowley smiled and bore himself down to the futon, catching Aziraphale’s mouth and drinking in the lingering taste of sake on his lips. Aziraphale murmured happily beneath him and undid Crowley’s sash with clever fingers.

Sushi hadn’t been what brought them together, but whenever Aziraphale ate it from then on, he thought of Crowley. Or so he said.

Crowley was banking on it having _some_ sort of effect.

With shaking hands, Aziraphale opened the bag and looked at the contents. It would’ve taken more than a little miracle to make sure his favourites were all there—and a larger miracle might draw unwanted attention to the reptile in the corner—but a flick of the tongue confirmed that at least a few things he enjoyed had made it across his desk. The air tasted of creamy scallops, eel with avocado, and freshly-grated wasabi.

And here he’d been stuck with earthworms.

Crowley waited with baited breath as Aziraphale stared into the bag, silently willing him to reach in, pull out the contents and…

Aziraphale crumpled the top with shaking hands and left it sitting on the desk, wandering away with a desperately lost look in his eyes. At least he was moving.

Crowley stared at the abandoned bag from his perch and hissed grumpily. Not food, then.

Or, at least, not sushi.

* * *

In those horrible, endless days after "you go too fast for me" Crowley had done a few things he wasn't proud of. If he couldn't prove a lover, he'd prove a villain and hate the idle pleasures of his days, and all that Shakespearean twaddle. He'd given up all hope of his angel ever properly being _his angel_, and wallowed in a string of miscreant pettiness resulting in the rise of Thatcher, which even Hell wasn’t sure if they should commend him for.

And then the European Cup Finals happened.

He reached his lowest, and Aziraphale—who he'd given up as gone forever from his life, no matter they had six thousand years shared history—had shown up at exactly the right moment. Miracle or providence or ineffability. Whatever had drawn Crowley to his side during his short stay in the Bastille, maybe, though Crowley’s circumstances at the time hadn’t been quite as dire.

Crowley was seated atop Heysel Stadium, surveying the carnage and regretting every choice in his life which’d led him there. He hadn’t _meant_ for a riot to break out. Put some bees in some bonnets, yes, and encourage some less-than-friendly rivalry between fans. Certainly not _this_. He’d nudged a few Liverpool fans too far, perhaps. He’d expected a splendidly wicked fight, not the collapse of an entire wall of the stadium. Not anyone’s _death_. For once, he figured he was going to receive a commendation from Hell he’d actually earned, and he was going to hate it.

Crowley took another swig of scotch; the cheapest bottle he’d put his hands on, because he deserved to drink nothing but swill as he watched the depressingly slow progress of the clean up crew.

The smell of fresh bread suddenly overwhelmed the senses, and Crowley jumped a bit when Aziraphale appeared beside him.

"Have you ever tried macarons?"

Crowley blinked slowly. "What."

"They became quite popular around the 1890s, though dear Catherine had them brought to France long before then." Aziraphale pulled a small box tied with a black ribbon seemingly out of nowhere.

Crowley regarded it with deep suspicion. "What are you doing here?" he finally demanded.

“Eating macarons,” Aziraphale replied glibly. He opened the box and presented the contents to Crowley. “I think you’ll enjoy the pink one.”

Crowley scowled at the pink one. What the bloody Heaven was Aziraphale playing at? Eighteen fucking years of Crowley tormenting himself with six stupid words and suddenly showing up without as much as a by your leave to torment him in his lowest hour with perfect little pink confections? Crowley wanted to bat the box out of his hands and send it spiraling off into the destruction below.

Instead he grabbed up the pink one and shoved it in his mouth.

The pink one, as it turned out, tasted of chestnuts and whisky; and he did enjoy it. He glowered at Aziraphale instead of admitting it.

“There we go,” Aziraphale said with a knowing smile. He selected a bright blue one and took a delicate bite, sighing sinfully around it. “Blueberry and frangipane.”

“Angel, it’s been a long and horribly confusing decade and a half, not to mention a particularly wretched evening. Would you mind telling me why you’re bothering me now?” He took another macaron and rammed it into his mouth. Grapefruit, he thought, with a little circle of Champagne gelée in the centre. Unfairly good, though no one would ever dream of accusing Aziraphale of choosing subpar sweets.

“I’ve never had much of an imagination,” Aziraphale told him. “Not like you. Your propensity for wonder is truly a gift. But I spend an unfortunate amount of time every day thinking of what would happen to you if my, erm, _gift_ came to be misused or carelessly handled. Not by yourself, my dear,” he said in response to the indignance likely crossing Crowley’s face. “But by anyone else who might get a hand on it. Hours of ruminating upon what might bring you to such circumstances, and the inevitable consequences.” Aziraphale tentatively placed his fingers atop Crowley’s knuckles, clenched into hard-tipped whiteness in the space between them. “It’s been quite a horrible decade and a half for me too, you see.”

Crowley’s face twisted up in what was probably a telling grimace.

“I miss you,” Aziraphale finally told him. “And I know it’s my own fault, but I couldn’t bear another day without making sure you knew.”

There was one macaron left. Crowley lifted it from the box and took a small bite before offering the other half to Aziraphale.

“Orange and saffron,” he said.

Aziraphale smiled, a small and fragile thing, and took the macaron out of his hand.

They’d chased the sweetness out of their mouths with cheap scotch, and under their watchful gaze the cleaners made quick work of what remained of the rubble.

Macarons meant something to them. When he’d been obliged to visit France for a routine temptation a couple of months later, he’d brought back samples of the impressive Ladurée collection, and they’d shared them in small bites, passing them back and forth to let each other get a taste of each one. While there was no way he could get himself to France and back with Aziraphale reluctant to move more than across the room, surely he could manage something.

Every day for a week, he hissed at people walking past the window next to his terrarium, pressing ideas into their minds about the owner of the shop and the best way to get his attention. Subtle suggestions weren’t his forte—he preferred a more direct approach—but he could persuade people to tiny acts of gluttony with the best of them. There was one place in London Aziraphale deigned visit when he wanted macarons and nip across the channel was out of the question, and Crowley knew they shipped citywide. Not because he occasionally had done whenever Aziraphale had been a sad bastard in the years since the bakery had opened, but because being around Aziraphale when he was being a sad bastard was irritating, and nothing cheered him up as reliably as sweets.

Someone finally took the bait about a week later. During the time, Aziraphale had three more conversations with the Metatron, and Crowley had miracled a gross of earthworms, and one panicked miniature salamander, into the planter outside.

Instead of being delivered via takeaway, this time the macarons were mailed directly to A. Z. Fell. No reason for him to quibble guiltily over stealing someone’s dinner, simply a small box of macarons sent directly his way from some anonymous admirer _who thereafter would forget Aziraphale existed if they knew what was good for them_.

When the deliveryman arrived, Aziraphale frowned over the locked door when he moved to accept the box. He left it unlocked, but failed to notice it the deadbolt sliding into place behind his back as he carried the package back to the desk. Crowley hadn’t allowed the bookshop door to be unlocked for more than about ten minutes at a time ever since the sour-faced blighter had trotted off with one of his angel’s books in hand, but Aziraphale still waited at the counter for anyone who might stray inside. Curiously, he never checked to see if the door was unlocked, though he always looked at it, puzzled, when he closed up in the evenings.

Crowley, for the life of him, couldn’t figure out what it meant.

Aziraphale unwrapped the small parcel and stared at the macarons inside much as he had the sushi; confused and more than a little lost. It was an assortment of ten brilliant colours, with a small guide accompanying them to help him in deciphering the flavours.

_Eat one_, Crowley glowered. _Look at the purple one. You’d love it. Make yourself a cuppa to go along with it. _

Aziraphale picked up the very one Crowley had been thinking at. Earl grey tea and vanilla buttercream. His hands were shaking as he brought it to his nose to smell it. His eyes drifted shut, and the very tip of his tongue slipped from his mouth to wet his lower lip.

And then he very carefully set the macaron back down.

Fuck.

Hope stirred unwarranted in his chest when, instead of binning it as he had the sushi, Aziraphale carefully placed the box next to Crowley’s terrarium.

Perhaps noticing Crowley’s scrutiny, Aziraphale blinked and then curled in on himself. “Not very angelic, is it?”

Did he mean wanting the macarons? Letting them go to waste? Saving them instead of destroying them? Crowley couldn’t tell. When Aziraphale slipped his hand into Crowley’s terrarium to brush his fingers across Crowley’s scales, though, his fingers weren’t as frigid as they had been. Crowley selfishly let himself enjoy the moment, and tickled Aziraphale’s index finger with a few flicks of his tongue, happy to note the taste of the angel was less off-putting as well.

Aziraphale left his hand still a moment, and Crowley took the opportunity for what it was. He twined himself through the angel’s fingers and stilled, waiting for his angel to pick him up. When Aziraphale did, Crowley was highly gratified. Aziraphale absently allowed Crowley to sit in his unpleasantly cool hand over the next hour. It wasn’t the first time he’d manhandled Crowley as a snake; but Crowley had long been accustomed to soft and gentle skin, warm and free of callouses. Aziraphale’s hand at present might as well have been made of the marble he was trying to emulate. Had Crowley been a real snake, he might’ve been very uncomfortable.

He gave a pointed shiver, which Aziraphale hopefully wouldn’t figure out was unusual for a snake, to garner the angel’s attention.

“Oh.”

Aziraphale set him back down in the terrarium. It hadn’t been what Crowley wanted, but when the angel snapped his fingers and a small ball of heated light appeared overhead it was hard to begrudge it. Crowley mounted his branch to curl up closer to it, and Aziraphale tutted.

“I’m not very good at caring for others, it seems.”

A flagrant lie. Aziraphale was brilliant at caring for others, when he had a mind to. It was an absent sort of care, occasionally, delivered by route. But when he well and truly loved someone? There were no lengths he’d fail to go in order to see them happy. Crowley knew it well enough. Firsthand, even, though it had taken them a bloody long time to reach the point where they could acknowledge it together.

Which brought Crowley to his next idea.

* * *

It was a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of good fortune must be in want of a wife. It was a truth slightly less universally acknowledged that a well-intentioned angel with two left feet could run amok throughout Regency England.

Crowley, at the time, was representing herself as a disgustingly wealthy lady of rank. The sort of connected landowner who could move freely about in society without escort or husband. If she hadn’t ever deigned marry, it was because her male relations had provided her with full control of her assets, though Crowley sincerely preferred people speculate about the source of her wealth. She allowed herself to appear a graceful forty years of age, well past the age when the allure her reputed riches would attract suitors. She arrived in ----shire to visit with a local family who, if carefully tended, would eventually lead to the rise of _momento mori_ photography in less than a century, leading to a truly heinous number of disturbing pictures which would haunt households and unsettle the squeamish across the country for years to come.

When Crowley had accepted the invitation to a dance one evening, she hadn’t known one Mr. Fell would be in attendance.

When Mr. Fell walked through the door, Crowley noted the obvious snub of every young lady stepping well away from him and doing their best to dodge his path. Crowley was unimpressed, especially when she saw the ensuing droop to his features. Poor angel. All he ever wanted was to please.

“Might I inquire after gentleman who just walked in?” she asked her hostess.

“Mr. Fell of Mayburry Hall,” the woman replied. Crowley had long forgotten her name. “Lately of London.” She leaned in closely to share an intimacy in Crowley’s ear. “If he asks you to dance, find a reason to decline.”

“Is he of vicious temperament?” Oh, no, Crowley was assured none could be as amiable as Mr. Fell. “Penniless, then?” Estimates varied, but he was thought to be quite rich indeed. “Then whatever is the problem?”

The problem it appeared, seeing as the gavotte hadn’t yet been invented, Aziraphale hadn’t figured out how to move across a dance floor with any sort of refinement. The simplest movement would inevitably become a slogging shuffle, until Mr. Fell—in the country to explore marriageable prospects according to the local gossip—became the most dreaded of partners. No one could look elegant while engaged with him, and more than one young woman was convinced his clumsy attempt at the quadrille had ruined their chances at a good match with an unimpressed spectator. They begged their mothers to find some occupation for them at the first sign of his approach. For all his looks were pleasant, and his manner engaging, it was largely understood dancing with him was the worst of all fates threatening to befall a young woman of any fortune at the many and varied gatherings of their neighbourhood. Feet were trod upon. Reputations of grace unfairly maligned. It became widely acknowledged no matter how many thousands of pounds per year, he was possibly the worst scourge ever to be inflicted upon the young ladies across the entirety of ----shire

Silly, flighty things. Crowley was made of sterner stuff.

It took Aziraphale an unfortunate quarter hour before he finally noticed Crowley. It then became a matter of finding someone to facilitate introductions. In fact, almost another hour complete passed before he was finally being presented to her.

“Mr. Fell allow me the pleasure of introducing Lady Elizabeth Serpiente. Lady Elizabeth, Mr. Fell.”

“My lady,” Aziraphale said with his deepest bow. Hours passed as niceties were exchanged before, finally, Aziraphale recognized the pointed look Crowley was shooting him. “Might I engage you for the next dance?”

“Thank you,” Crowley replied. “I would be delighted.”

Her hostess gave her a look the very picture of pitying condescension, which Crowley completely ignored.

They swept onto the floor when the next movement started.

“Dare I ask what you’re doing here?” Aziraphale asked out the side of his mouth.

“Only a minor mischief,” Crowley told him. “And you?”

“There’s a wonderfully good author in the area I’m trying to encourage. She doesn’t seem to put much value in her work, but I believe she’ll be one of the greats if she musters up the courage to publish.” They met and Aziraphale placed his hand upon her waist at exactly the wrong angle to allow them to place their arms properly. Crowley shifted, and used her elbows to bump him into the correct position. “Ah. Thank you.”

“Are you going to make love to the poor thing and then leave her to fuel her genius by merit of a broken heart when you refuse to marry?”

“My dear, I would never.” He turned them the wrong way, but allowed Crowley to nudge them into the right path. It might appear to all and sunder he was leading, but they both knew better. “Simply encouraging her by mentioning a few other notable lady writers of history. It’s been drattedly hard to convince her to dance with me, however, and I can’t very much call on her in private without being mistaken in my intentions.”

“Which one is she?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale gestured across the floor to a veritable willow branch of a brunette dancing with an officer of the local militia.

“Leave it to me, then.”

“Oh, my dear, I couldn’t possibly ask—”

“You’re not asking, angel. Though you might owe me a favour in return.”

“Anything.”

Crowley was the one to miss the step this time. “Anything? Careful, angel, I might horribly abuse such an offer.”

Aziraphale looked at Crowley with complete confidence. “You wouldn’t.”

The dance passed far too quickly from there, and Crowley returned to his hostess with flushed cheeks and a small smile.

“I must compliment your exceptional dancing,” the old crone said with a knowing smile. “You made it appear as though even Mr. Fell could be salvaged.”

Crowley merely inclined her head.

It was well past midnight, under cover of darkness, when Crowley had made her way undiscovered to Mayburry Hall. If Aziraphale cared enough about this writer’s prospects to insist upon remaining in the country and seeing his errand through, he needed someone to help him figure out how to dance. And given the local young ladies had no stomach for patience, it obviously fell to Crowley.

The look spreading across his face when she walked through his library door was… heady. Shock combined with delight and affection, ages-old and uniquely able to send warmth curling from her toes to the crown of her head. If snakes could smile, Crowley would’ve at the memory. He twisted and coiled a bit, though, which was close enough.

“I am here to instruct you,” Crowley informed him. “Move the chair.”

“Instruct me?” Aziraphale repeated.

“You want your author to dance with you? Then we need to make the prospect less terrifying.” Aziraphale continued to stare and Crowley tapped her foot impatiently. “The chair, angel.”

“Oh. Right.”

What had they danced to? They hadn’t had music, obviously, and they’d had to land on a piece they both knew intimately in order to keep time. Had Crowley the right vocal cords, he might’ve hummed it to jog his memory. Something lively. And Crowley had been very generous in allowing Aziraphale to lead, though she’d corrected him more than a few times over the course of their evening, and a good many evenings besides.

Aziraphale’s reputation was well-earned; he truly had been a terrible dancer. He stumbled, tended to list to the right, allowed himself to become distracted and had no clue about how to place his hands in such a way that wasn’t either mildly incorrect or scandalously so. And yet Crowley had enjoyed every moment of it. Correcting him with a sharp rebuke to see a flush crawl across his cheeks had been one of her primary joys of the decade.

One night, after she had finally coached him successfully through the steps of a basic cotillion, they tucked together on a settee in front of his expansive fireplace, passing a bottle of wine back and forth between them. Crowley had kicked off her shoes and shoved them into Aziraphale’s lap to make him repair some of the damage he’d done to her poor toes.

“I am sorry, my dear,” he said.

“You’re getting better.” Crowley lied to assuage her own ego, obviously. She couldn’t admit to having a hopeless pupil without owning herself to be a likewise hopeless instructor.

Aziraphale’s hand drifted from her feet up her calf, and when Crowley regarded him with a slightly raised brow, he smiled down at her ankle. With a quick shimmy, Crowley shifted herself further down towards him, not quite in his lap, though it wouldn’t take more than a quick twist of her hips to get there.

“The servants have been sleeping remarkably well of late,” Aziraphale commented mildly.

Crowley hummed in agreement. For the exercise, she had chosen a simple morning dress; light in colour and easy to move in, in case she was required to dodge some of Aziraphale’s more lively attempts at the steps. It crept up her legs agreeably, nudged along by Aziraphale’s warm palms, until her thighs were exposed, her breath quickened.

“May I?” Aziraphale whispered.

  
Crowley shivered. “Oh, yes.”

Aziraphale leaned down and kissed the inside of her left thigh, running his mouth up towards her undergarments and slipping his brilliant fingers inside to run gently across her folds. Crowley hummed happily and pressed herself into his hand, leaning up to kiss him as he bent down over her. She wasn’t wet yet. It took more than a few heated looks and the touch of her angel’s fingers to get her body interested in proceedings, but Aziraphale enjoyed a challenge. He hiked her skirt up further and pressed a kiss to her stomach. His thumb stroked across her clitoris and Crowley sighed into the feeling; the smallest spark nipping at her senses, promising the beginning of something marvellous.

Aziraphale pulled at her pants until she was exposed, and kissed her abdomen. His thumb continued to rub small, delicious circles against her.

He slid off the couch to the floor and positioned himself between her legs.

“Let’s not risk waking them, my darling,” he murmured.

“Not risking anything right now,” Crowley grumbled.

With a smile, Aziraphale pressed his mouth to her. Crowley loosed the tiniest puff of air as his tongue replaced his thumb and began laving her with dedicated attention. Aziraphale was eternally eager to please, one way or another, and words couldn’t describe how pleasing this was. Heat spread up from her cunt until her inner thighs trembled and her toes curled quite outside her control. Aziraphale kept his hands upon them, fingers stroking her soft skin until she nudged him with her heel.

“Angel,” she whispered.

Without moving his mouth, he slipped a finger inside her and his tongue quickened against her. He truly was unfairly good at this, Crowley thought, only a moment before a second finger joined the first. His head moved in time with each stroke of his tongue, and when she buried a hand in his hair he groaned into her.

Crowley cupped her own breast, squeezing her nipple through the dress’ thin cloth. Oh, but how she adored his attentions. No one knew better how to coax her body to pleasure, though she hadn’t invited many others to try. More fingers joined the first in short order, and she clenched down on them as he pressed his tongue against her, roughly, and twisted them around until she was wet and throbbing around them.

Perilously close to tipping over, and shivering from the pleasure running through her veins, she pulled gently on his hair.

“Angel,” she murmured. “I want you.”

Aziraphale pulled back, and pressed a kiss to her mons. “You have me.”

“No, I mean…”

“Ah.” He drew back—she regretted the loss immediately—and ran his hands up her torso, seeking a clasp. Obviously he hadn’t undressed many ladies in this period. The thought was unfairly gratifying. Also irritating, considering he had no clue as to how to move things along. Her dress employed a low neckline with delicate lace chemisette, as befitted a woman of her supposed rank, and Aziraphale appeared to be more interested in preserving it than removing it, which she simply couldn’t abide.

“Angel,” she hissed, “I’ll rip it myself.”

“But it’s such wonderful craftwork.”

With a groan, Crowley placed her foot against Aziraphale’s chest and pushed him back. He went with a small gasp of surprise, landing on the thick rug before the fireplace.

A snap of her fingers and their clothes were gone. To Hell, for all she cared.

“Honestly,” Aziraphale murmured, playing scandalized as though he hadn’t been three fingers deep inside her but moments earlier.

She followed him down to the floor.

When she finally deemed him acceptable, several weeks later, Aziraphale returned to the dance floor and convinced his young author to dance with him. A few words of encouragement, and a blessing or two, and she had gone on to live a life of some renown. Around the same time, Crowley had successfully implanted the idea of taking photographs of dead people, though no one would appreciate his genius for years afterwards, well into the Victorian period.

_Pleyel_, Crowley suddenly remembered. They’d both been thinking of Pleyel.

That evening, after Aziraphale went through the motions of closing the store and looking surprised the door had once again deemed lock itself, Crowley flicked his tail in the direction of the back room. Aziraphale’s ancient gramophone—already miraculously loaded with Pleyel—came to life. Joyful music filtered into the shop, and Aziraphale froze next to the door. He stood still, his eyes drifting shut. His expression never changed, but there was something lighter about him as he listened. His neutrality drifted towards cheer, and his bland smile acquired on a genuineness and sincerity Crowley hadn’t seen since his return.

_Come on, angel_, he thought. _Push through it_.

Aziraphale drifted across the store, towards the back. With a thought, Crowley unlatched the top of his terrarium and followed. Aziraphale’s legs carried him faster than Crowley moved, and by the time Crowley caught up, he found Aziraphale seated on his couch, in Crowley’s usual spot, listening to the music with rapt attention.

Traitorous hope bloomed in Crowley’s chest, his tiny heart rattling about as though close to bursting.

Aziraphale remained still throughout the night, enjoying the music which never halted. Crowley tucked himself under the couch, near Aziraphale’s feet, repeating the same thoughts over and over again until the early morning light fought its way beneath the curtains. _This was never the dream. You’re asleep now, as you are. And it’s time to wake up_.

The following night, Aziraphale failed to make his call to the Metratron. Instead, he returned to the couch and sat before the gramophone once again, the smallest of all smiles tugging at the corner of his mouth.

* * *

Given the success of the gramophone, and music now their constant companion, Crowley decided it was time to give Aziraphale a taste of something even better. He’d seen Aziraphale’s eyes lingering on the box of macarons, though he never dared take one. The angel had settled luxuriously into his temptation, allowing himself to embrace it without succumbing. It was a slippery slope from there; Crowley knew better than anyone.

The first bottle of wine they’d shared after Adam’s cessation of the Apocalypse had been shortly after the bus had dropped them at Crowley’s flat. They’d retreated from the world they’d helped save, propping each other up as they navigated the unfairly complicated buttons of the building’s lift.

They made it to Crowley’s flat and stumbled inside.

“Careful of the spill in my office,” Crowley said.

“I will do,” Aziraphale assured him.

“Something to drink?”

“Oh, yes please.”

Crowley had a beautiful bottle of madeira from 1880 he’d been saving for the right occasion. And while he hadn’t known it when he’d acquired it, the right moment was the second he and Aziraphale had finally gotten onto the same page. He pulled it from the pantry and went in search of his ah-so to uncork it.

“Been one Heaven of a ride, hasn’t it?” he asked.

Aziraphale smiled across the kitchen island. “It certainly has.” There was still much to do; Aziraphale had nattered at him about the witch’s last prophecy all the way back to London, and they needed to decipher it before their former employers caught up with them. But for moment, at least, they could be at peace with one another.

“Your thermos finally came in handy,” Crowley said, gesturing over his shoulder towards his office. Where the bloody hell had he left it?

“My… Oh. Oh, my dear. You’re not injured?” Aziraphale rounded the counter and pressed his hands to Crowley’s chest, as though he could discern any potential life-threatening injury through Crowley’s clothes via his palms.

“Not at all,” Crowley promised. He put his own glass down and lay his hands atop Aziraphale’s. “The holy water did exactly what I needed it to.”

Aziraphale’s hands twitched but slightly, and then turned around to tuck themselves into Crowley’s hold. “I should have trusted you with it from the start. But I couldn’t bear the thought of what it might do.”

“I remember,” Crowley assured him. Hearing Aziraphale’s broken confession atop the remnants of Heysel Stadium. “Wish I’d known what you meant, back when you first refused.”

“I couldn’t have known it myself, Crowley. The thought of you disappearing from my life was hard enough to bear without me being honest about the wherefores of it.” Aziraphale conjured up a small smile, as fragile as ever Crowley had seen him.

“Bit of a wreck without me, you mean?”

“You have no idea, my dear,” Aziraphale replied without looking up, his attention determinedly fixed on their joined hands. “Do you know, any period of time where I have to go without your company seems particularly interminable.”

Crowley’s breath stuck in his throat. Because those words sounded an awfully similar to an admission of something neither of them had ever voiced. Their Arrangement was one thing. Sex another, though significantly more enjoyable. But what Aziraphale was suggesting…

Crowley had never been much of a reader, but he could read between the lines.

When they kissed, this time, it was different from any other touch of their lips he’d experienced in their lives together. Crowley poured every ounce of love and devotion into it. The shattering grief crushing him down when he’d seen the bookshop alight. The promises he’d wanted to whisper into Aziraphale’s skin a thousand times before. All of it.

And Aziraphale gave as good as he got. He tasted of a thousand nights they spent pressed together, convincing themselves it was only for a jolly good time and nothing more; and the dew gathered from the leaves in Eden; and wine sipped out of everything from animal skins to fine crystal.

For the first time since his Fall, Crowley’s heart filled with the inextricable knowledge that he was loved.

Crowley kept their hands tightly clasped together as he drew Aziraphale back, to his room. Any other night, and he might’ve taken delight in opening Aziraphale as one might unwrap a particularly precious gift. There had been nights when he’d kissed every inch of skin as it was revealed, mapping out Aziraphale’s body until he knew it as intimately as he knew his own. But in the moment, curled together, he made no move to do more than press their hands close and whisper love into Aziraphale’s ear.

The bottle of madeira had gone unopened. And two days later, Crowley had shown up at the bookshop with it in hand.

“Let’s save it,” Aziraphale suggested with a smile. “For the right moment.”

Crowley knew there would never be another moment for it.

He escaped his terrarium again to follow Aziraphale to the back room. Heaven hadn’t come after him for missing his regular check-in, and Aziraphale’s ramrod-stiff posture was slightly more relaxed than it had been. In six thousand years, he’d never been one for slouching, but his shoulders were less stiff, and his face remained relaxed and bright.

Crowley wound his way up Aziraphale’s desk. Untouched by Heaven, from what he could tell, but strewn with piles upon piles of books, papers, and ancient scrolls. He found the bottle tucked between a well-loved collection of poetry and one of Aziraphale’s ridiculous misprinted Bibles. The lewd one.

Crowley knocked it off the desk, at precisely the right angle to break the glass.

“Oh dear!” Aziraphale leapt to his feet, music momentarily forgotten. Crowley waited on the desk, playing dumb as Aziraphale crossed the room. “Oh, little darling, what a mess you’ve made. How did you manage to escape?”

Crowley, warmed by the endearment, flicked his tongue at him, and Aziraphale picked him up. His hands were warmer, again.

“We shall have to remedy this,” Aziraphale murmured. He waved a hand and the bottle sprang back together, the wine returning to its place. Less, due to some miscommunication between Aziraphale and his minor miracle, the cork. Had Aziraphale sought it out, he probably would’ve been surprised to discover it had gone completely astray somewhere around Llanafan-fawr.

Aziraphale frowned at the bottle and, hesitantly, craned his head down to sniff at the contents.

“My,” he murmured. “But that smells good.”

_It tastes good, too. Take a sip. Remember the first time we drank madeira together, and you ate the fussy little dessert with the figs and ricotta? You even let me try a bite. _

Aziraphale ran his thumb along the mouth of the bottle and then, with a nervous glance about, pressed his thumb to his lips. His eyes fluttered shut and he let out an unspeakably unangelic whisper of a noise, swallowed up immediately by the gramophone’s sweet piano music.

“Well.” Aziraphale dipped his pinky in to collect whatever other small drops remained in the neck of the bottle. “Well, well, well.”

_Well_, Crowley echoed silently. _Well, well, well_.

He never got the chance to see if Aziraphale poured himself a glass. Instead, he returned Crowley to his terrarium and tightly secured the lid. Crowley remained for the rest of the evening, senses pursed in case he heard the faintest whisper of an angel’s hand on a glass bottle.

* * *

It was, Crowley decided a few days later, time to bring out the big guns. Metaphorically, unless Gabriel stuck his manky head in through the door. Aziraphale had missed yet another meeting with the Metatron, and while there hadn’t been any consequences—yet—Crowley wanted to make sure his angel was back to normal before Heaven decided to come looking for him.

It brought him back to their time in Athens, when Crowley—Crawly, then—had been posing as one of the Four Hundred and doing his utmost to bugger up the concept of democracy. Aziraphale, as he discovered later, had been there to attend the Thesmophria. In those days, prior to their Arrangement, the angel never shared the nature of his work, though he always acted absurdly glad to see Crawly whenever their paths crossed. Considering the appreciation, Crawly tried to ensure it happened at least once every few decades.

At the time, Crawly’d been in a foul temper; he’d snapped a blood feather at exactly the wrong place in his left wing, and while the bleeding had mostly ceased, it was tender and he couldn’t fish it out of his plumage. He was a vain creature, and tended to take better care of his wings than most demons, but there were limits to his flexibility. Tucked away though they were, he knew he’d have to deal with it eventually, which likely meant returning to Hell to beg some untrustworthy bastard to do him a favour. He _hated_ owing favours to other demons.

Crawly glowered at the world from the shaded corner of a marketplace stall. Those who passed through his field of vision would eventually return home to find their wares spoiled, or a hole in their purses which had resulted in the loss of coin. One woman’s bracelet fell into a pile of shit and her face twisted in horror as she cast her gaze about for someone to help her retrieve it.

She crouched down, about to attempt it herself, when Crawly’s attention was drawn across the road and his eyes widened but slightly, his mouth utterly dry.

He’d never seen Aziraphale in a woman’s corporeal manifestation, yet he knew it was Aziraphale the moment he caught sight of her. The angel had always favoured light colours, even when such things were highly inappropriate to the climate, current dress or standards of the time, and now she was a vision in a white chiton. Her platinum hair was bundled up above her hair, secured in the fashion of the day, and while she wore no excessive adornments, there was no doubting the high quality of the fabric veritably floating around her.

Mischief—and troublesome wings—forgotten, Crawly shadowed her through Athens until she reached a modest home in which she obviously lived by herself. They’d been more inclined to use miracles in those days to divert attention, instead of using them to fit in with the mortal world, and Aziraphale had obviously employed more than one to keep the curious and ill-intentioned from her home.

It wouldn’t keep him.

She opened her door hesitantly at his knock, and her face lit up when she saw him on the other side. “Crawly! I hadn’t realized you were back in Greece.” She stepped aside to let him in. “I haven’t seen you since the unfortunate upset with Smerdis.”

“Yeah, well, floated about a bit. Thought I’d come and see what the fuss was about now they’ve kicked out the senators.”

“I assume you had something to do with it,” Aziraphale said, lips pinched in a not at all attractive way. Crawly suddenly longed to press his own mouth against hers. It was a wholly new sensation. Not because she was woman-shaped; Crawly had been there to nudge Paris in the direction of Helen, and he knew how the shocking beauty of a woman could turn the eye. Aziraphale, as she was, was not beautiful. She was transcendent.

“Wine?” she offered.

Crawly must’ve croaked out something in the affirmative, because the next thing he knew they were lounging about on comfortable furnishings and catching each other up on what had been going on since they’d last met in Persia.

“…at which point I realized it wasn’t a cow at all, but something called a gaur. And can you believe Ariel still hasn’t forgiven me for the mistake?”

“Heaven refusing to forgive a trespass? Sounds unlikely.” Crowley took an exceedingly deliberate sip of wine.

Aziraphale huffed at him. “No need for sarcasm, I’m sure.”

“Whatever you say, angel.” He shifted, pushing his back up against the pillow. He hissed in discomfort when his cracked feather tilted at the wrong angle and begin bleeding anew. “Grk.”

“My dear?”

“Snapped blood feather,” he hissed.

Aziraphale blinked. “Whyever didn’t you mention. Up, then.” He blinked at her in surprise as she grabbed his hands and dragged him from the room, through the home and back to her bedroom. “You know I’m not adverse to helping you with such things.”

“Since when did I know this?” Crawly demanded as she shoved him down onto a bench. It took him longer than it should have to realize they were in her bedroom.

“I would have thought it obvious,” Aziraphale replied. “Out with them, then. Let’s see.”

Powerless to refuse her, Crawly spread out his wings. He thought he heard Aziraphale’s breath catch, but when he glanced over his shoulder at her, she appeared perfectly at ease.

“The left one, yeah?” he said.

Aziraphale nodded, and set herself to combing her fingers through his feathers in search of the problem. He wasn’t sure if the entire feather had come loose—it certain felt as though it was still attached, though it may have been more phantom pain than reality—or if he was simply spitting blood out of a broken shaft. Either way, he hated it.

Her fingers were warm against his plumage, and his eyes drifted shut at her ministrations. She wasn’t simply seeking out the broken feather, no. She was teasing the others to rights, her touch agonizingly tender.

“Here we are,” she said at length. She reached over his shoulder and held out her hand to him. He blinked owlishly, and Aziraphale sighed. “This isn’t a pleasant feeling, in my experience. You may take my hand if you wish.”

Oh, how he did.

Quite beyond his conscious control, he grasped her hand in his and held tight. Her fingers brushed against the skin of his wing as she grasped the broken shaft with sharp nails, and he gasped in pain when she plucked it free of the follicle. His hand tightened on hers hard enough to crack bone, had she been human, but as it was she merely squeezed firmly back.

“Bloody fuck!”

Instead of scolding him for his language, Aziraphale placed the broken feather—still intact, save for the nasty split halfway down the shaft—on the dressing table before him. “There we go.” She tucked her thumb up against the bleeding follicle, and with a sharp shiver of barely-there pain as she set it to rights, the bleeding stopped entirely.

She started to draw her hand away from his grip, and his fingers tightened on hers.

“Do you…” He paused. “I’d be happy to help with yours, if you wanted to give my right wing a once over.”

Aziraphale loosed a shaky breath, and took a long time to answer. “If you’re sure.”

He released her hand, and Aziraphale went to work. Crawly resolved to stop caring for his wings ever after, if it led to her diligent efforts to groom him. He relaxed into boneless contentment, leaning backwards until he’d pressed up against her chest. He hadn’t fallen into the habit of sleeping yet—he’d need to wait until the Fourteenth Century before he understood the fuss of it—but in the moment he might’ve happily dozed off against her, pillowed against her soft breasts.

When she finished, he reluctantly straightened.

“You don’t need to—” she began. She stopped when Crawly turned on the bench to look at her.

“Let me.”

“All right, then.”

Her touch had been a caress, a sumptuous treat to his senses, and he tried to emulate the intimacy as best he could. Her feathers were glorious. He’d seen them off and on over the past four millennia, but never touched. Now he couldn’t get enough of it.

Crawly failed to notice the flush creeping up her chest right away, consumed as he was with the softness beneath his hands. When he did, though, he found himself suddenly hesitating.

“Angel?”

“Yes?” Her voice was shaky, her eyes closed.

“Are you…” He paused.

Aziraphale distracted was charming, in its own way. Crawly could always be confident of her being truthful when she was distracted. She was shit at lying, normally, but unfairly good at evasion.

Time to take away the opportunity at evasion.

He leaned forward and pressed his lips to the back of her neck. Daring, he knew. Considering who they were, and the four thousand years of history already between them. And yet.

Aziraphale gasped, but didn’t pull away. Crawly rested his hands at her waist, and hoped she’d ignore the violent trembling of them.

“Angel,” he whispered.

“Demon,” Aziraphale returned as quietly.

He began to pull away, and Aziraphale’s hands shot to his, grasping tightly. Her hands were shaking too as she drew Crawly’s up the length of her body to cup her breasts through the gossamer-thin chiton. Crawly pulled her back against him, tight, and trailed his lips from her neck to her shoulder. His teeth grazed the sensitive skin where her neck and shoulder met, and she shuddered in his embrace.

Somehow managing to keep his hands upon her, Crawly shifted himself around to take the seat next to her on the bench. He waited, unmoving, until her eyes fluttered open to look at him. Once she could see the intent in his eyes, he leaned into her to press his mouth to hers. Aziraphale gasped, and her hands spasmed on his. Her lips were plush, warm and full. He considered giving up breathing entirely, and cheerfully, to keep this contact between them forever.

He tilted his head and their noses brushed together. Aziraphale smiled against his lips.

“Wonderful,” she murmured. The moments in which she drew away to speak were unbearable, and he pressed himself desperately against her to catch her once again.

They moved and adjusted themselves, until Aziraphale was straddling Crawly’s lap and he was holding onto the last bit of his sanity by the most meagre of threads. He trailed his fingers up from the swell of her breast to where the clasp held her chiton in place, and unsecured it with an efficient twitch of his fingers.

Before he could do more than catch a glimpse at her beautifully exposed left breast, Aziraphale caught his cheek in her palm and tilted his face up to meet her gaze.

“Is it this body? Because it’s useful for the moment, my darling, but I’m not at all sure if it’s me.”

“It’s not this body,” Crawly promised. “It’s you, angel. It’s always been you.” He’d hadn’t known, then, how unerring truth those words would turn out to be. But he did know he meant them.

Her grin defied the sun its splendour, her lips kissed to berry-red fullness. She wrapped her arms around his neck. When he stood, she allowed his momentum to carry her up as well. He bore them to her bed, almost not big enough for the both of them, and untied the second clasp before setting himself to the soft skin between her breasts.

They’d truly fumbled their way through it. The memory made him happily curl up around himself. Aziraphale had twisted and keened under him with every swipe of his fingers or mouth against parts hereto unknown to be sensitive. Her wings, still out, snapped out when she groaned and spasmed around him, and she’d kissed him desperately to swallow up his own moaning at the moment of climax. When he’d withdrawn, he’d set his mouth to her to tease out more of those same, wonderful sounds, and discover what else she liked.

“We’ll need to do this again,” Aziraphale murmured into his clavicle, much later. She kissed his breastbone and he pressed his lips into her hair.

“Anytime, angel.”

It hadn’t been the start of their Arrangement. The official agreement between them wouldn’t happen for centuries, yet. But it had been the start of something uniquely them. Perhaps the burgeoning idea of the two of them being together, on a side all their own. Nothing either of them could put to words, or even reconcile with themselves for another two millennia, but warm and present nonetheless.

Eventually, duty had called him to Nubia, and she’d been forced off towards Rome. Before they’d parted, Crawly presented Aziraphale—returned to his usual male-shaped form—with the feather he’d plucked from Crawly’s wing.

“I couldn’t. It’s scandalous,” Aziraphale breathed, his gaze full of covetous yearning as he beheld it. “Imagine if someone from my side found this among my possessions.”

Crawly smiled and tucked the feather behind Aziraphale’s ear.

And he still had it, Crowley knew. He’d found it in the days after Adam had recreated the bookshop, kept with a small collection of other treasures in Aziraphale’s room above the shops. He’d looked blithely unconcerned with Crowley’s discovery of it, and Crowley’d had no choice but to push him over on the bed and remind him of how they’d come to exchange it in the first place.

The feather had to be worth a few memories and the chance at breaking down what remained of Heaven’s now-tenuous hold on his angel’s mind.

The bottle of madeira had joined the box of macarons next to Crowley’s terrarium, waiting. For what, Crowley doubted Aziraphale understood. They were waiting, the same as Crowley, for Aziraphale to successfully win the fight against the burnishment and return to himself. Another nudge was all he needed, Crowley felt certain of it. And the feather was exactly the thing.

He summoned it into his terrarium and curled atop it. It was a comparably petite little contour feather, small enough to fit comfortably in the terrarium, but large enough Crowley wasn’t worried about it being overlooked. And, sure enough, Aziraphale spotted it when he returned from his nightly musical interlude.

He froze in spot, staring at it through the glass.

_Remember me_, Crowley commanded. He summoned every molecule of self-restraint to remain still.

Aziraphale opened the terrarium. While he’d usually manhandle Crowley up and out, this time he carefully nudged him aside to pull the feather out for examination.

His lips twitched silently around a word. Crowley’s name. Warmth bloomed through Crowley’s body and he lifted his head to watch his angel closely.

_Remember, remember, remember._

Crowley watched, shattered, as Aziraphale pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and took in a few heaving breaths. The tip of the feather brushed against his face, and he pulled it away to stare at in utter confusion and despair.

And then Aziraphale placed the feather back down in Crowley’s terrarium.

“Sorry to disturb your rest,” he whispered, noticing Crowley’s scrutiny. He stroked a fingertip across Crowley’s head.

The touch burned.

* * *

One last chance.

Crowley wasn’t sure how he knew, but he knew. He had one more crack at breaking through the burnishment’s mental control before Heaven noticed or decided to give a shit about Aziraphale’s failure to report in. All the sense memories with which he’d been bombarding Aziraphale would be swept away by whatever reinforcement the Metatron trucked in, and he wasn’t sure if there were any other memories the two of them had created more significant than the ones he’d already presented.

_But what else was there?! _

He slithered around his terrarium in noodly laps, trying to think of _anything_ else. There’d been the attempted Apocalypse, and while it carried significant weight, there wasn’t one single thing he associated with it other than a desperate sense of terror. Their lives had interconnected for six millennia; they’d shared such history pinpointing any other individual moment was next to impossible.

Except, maybe. The first memory.

What was the saying? Go big or go home?

Crowley escaped his terrarium again. But instead of trailing after Aziraphale to watch his movements, he made his way back to the crack in the foundation and squeezed back outside. Reverting to his human skin after such a long time spent as a serpent was uncomfortable, and it took him a few strides to remember how movement worked when one had hips to consider. He managed. He managed all the way to the nearest grocer’s, and then all the way back to Aziraphale’s door.

He refused to knock. He waved his hand and the doors swung open to permit him entry.

Aziraphale emerged from the back, Pleyel’s piano concerto in D-major following him in a sweep of joyful chords. He halted upon seeing Crowley, neutrality broke long enough to betray his shock. His hand twitched at his side, prepared to deliver another pathetic attempt at smiting.

Before he could, Crowley held up his offering: the largest, juiciest red apple he’d managed to find after digging through the stack of them and comparing them to one another for over a half hour.

The apple sat in his palm, in the air between them, the entire focus of one confused ethereal being brought to bear upon it.

“This isn’t part of our story,” Crowley began. “But it’s the prologue to everything we’ve shared, angel. All I want is our life together. You and me. Our side. They’ve got you believing it was only a dream, but the wine, the food, the music, it’s all real. What you're feeling right now is the dream. And I need you to wake up, because I'm not going to spend the next six thousand years without you.

"I love you, Aziraphale. And I refuse to believe they bollocksed you up enough to make you not love me in return, even if you can’t properly remember."

Aziraphale raised his hand, as though preparing to smite him. “I…” Agony crisscrossed his face, tears brimming in his eyes. "Be...begone, foul demon." His face contorted in grief as he said the words. "I cast you out."

The words held no miraculous power, but they managed to destroy him anyway. The apple fell from Crowley's hand. It hit the floor and rolled towards Aziraphale, who stepped backwards, staring down at it as though it were a live grenade. Crowley tucked his suddenly-burning hand into his back pocket.

"It wasn't enough time," Crowley whispered, mostly to himself. He cast his gaze up at Aziraphale for one, last look. "Another six millennia, and it still wouldn't be."

He spun on his heel and walked out the door.

* * *

Aziraphale's gaze flitted back and forth between the apple on the floor, and the door out of which the demon had escaped. Something was burning in the back of his mind, a roar of a bonfire banked higher than could safely been contained. But he couldn’t… he couldn’t…

His attention settled on the apple. Kneeling, he gently lifted it up to examine it and took a deep breath through his nose to catch its scent.

Eve had loved apples, afterwards, he suddenly remembered. She’d placed them next to the fire and let them cook until the insides were all bubbling juice, then drizzled honey atop them. _They’d_ watched from the shadows and _he’d_… _he’d_ grabbed Aziraphale his own apple, once. And Aziraphale hadn’t wanted to eat it, but the _smell_. No apples had ever smelled as good as those ones. Aziraphale had tucked in with reluctance, and eventually smiled at _him_ and offered _him_ a bite.

_Who_? Who had stood there with him, a familiar presence he’d first encountered atop the wall, and then…?

A name sat on the tip of his tongue; had been sitting there, for weeks. Since before he’d last reached out to the Metatron, a task in which he knew himself to be appallingly derelict. He’d managed to wrap his lips around it for only a moment before when he’d seen the feather in Raspberry’s enclosure, but it had disappeared, and he’d spent hours every evening since then trying to recall it.

The knowledge caught him in ebbs and waves as water brushing a shoreline, coming to him and disappearing within moments, stealing away footprints he’d made. He hadn’t been convinced they were memories, not until now. He accepted he’d undergone Heavenly burnishment. Gabriel told him he’d submitted voluntarily. After spending the entirety of his existence in Heavenly bookkeeping, he’d wanted the chance to explore Earth, and needed to make sure he was prepared for the honour of it by burnishing himself before being subjected to the pressure of sin he’d undoubtedly face upon his arrival. They cared about him, Gabriel said, and wanted to ensure he had the fortitude to withstand what awaited him in the world of men.

But the words had rung false, even in those scant moments after the process had been completed. Burnished angels weren’t supposed to try and remember anything. They performed their duties to the fullest of their abilities, and trusted anything they’d forgotten was better left behind them. Yet since Aziraphale had set foot in this bookshop, he’d found himself fighting for memories which shouldn’t have existed. He had cringed inside after the one customer had walked off with a book, though he hadn’t understood why. And when his door’s locks began proving unreliable, he hadn’t gone out of his way to check them. What did it mean?

Why did the bookshop seem to feel more like home than Heaven? Why hadn’t Gabriel sought him out once he’d failed to report in, if they cared the way he’d insisted? And why was the demon familiar, if they’d never met? Aziraphale had caught himself holding back the first time the demon had walked through the door, smiting him but gently. The thought of _harming_ him had been utterly repulsive on such a deep level Aziraphale had found himself in physical pain the moment after sending him spiralling out the doors. Yet it wasn’t memories of the pain keeping him from doing it again when the demon had walked through his doors again. Aziraphale truly couldn’t bring himself to hurt him. And even so, he’d managed by dint of his words alone. How did he have the power the encounter seemed to suggest?

_What was his name?!_ If he could only manage to keep ahold of that one small piece, he might be able to make sense of the dreadful feeling of loss plaguing him every moment of every day.

There might be a way to discover it, if only he was brave enough to try.

He stood and returned to the front counter, to the small collection of items which had appeared in his shop over the past few weeks. He began with a macaron.

_Macaron. Noun. Definition: a small round cake with a meringue-like consistency, made with egg whites, sugar, and powdered almonds and consisting of two halves sandwiching a creamy filling._

He picked the purple one he’d admired when he’d first opened the box and shoved it in his mouth. He’d supposedly never tasted a macaron before. Wouldn’t have had the opportunity. But as his teeth closed around the crispy shell and into the chewy centre, an explosion of earl grey and vanilla. He knew this flavour; this was one of his favourites. And the baker who made them was a Québécoise who had moved to London in 1988 to open a bakery, but hadn’t started selling macarons until she’d overheard Aziraphale gushing to…

Aziraphale’s hand tightened into a fist and he slammed it down on the counter. It was there, right on the edge of his thoughts, and still impossibly elusive.

The wine next, then. He’d smelled it after cleaning up the mess and caught whiffs of burnt caramel and salted nuts, candied fruit and sugarplums from the first time he’d had them for Christmas in 1609 when he’d been invited to try one by…

He drank straight from the bottle. The wine was full-bodied and rich, and lingered splendidly in his mouth in a way he’d only ever associated with madeira. And Aziraphale had associated flavours with madeira before, he knew it with terrifying certainty. _He’d_ never drank madeira on his own, though _he_ claimed to enjoy it. _“It’s sweeter when shared, angel,”_ _he’d_ said, and then stolen Aziraphale’s glass out of his hand and downed the entire contents.

Raspberry curled up on his side when Aziraphale reached into his glass box, and retrieved the feather from within. The shaft was broken, he’d noted when it had first appeared. The feather was old but cared-for, and he could remember tucking it in with all his most valuable possessions, kept safe through no small application of miracles as he’d traveled the world, sometimes for years before crossing paths with its original owner. He’d worn it on his lapel the day he’d opened the store, and Crowley had shown up with chocolates.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered. His eyes widened. “Crowley!”

The memories began to recede again, but he clung to Crowley’s name with the desperation of a man hanging from a cliff face. He grabbed a pen and scribbled it down on the nearest surface—the top of the macaron box. He stared at the name, repeating it over and over.

_“We can’t have you running amok miraclling everything on Earth. Other angels are starting to ask questions about it,” _Gabriel had said, when he’d appeared in the bookshop, Aziraphale suddenly recalled. The memory still behaved as a dream, eager to fade away out of his tenuous grasp of it. _“We don’t want you dead anymore, Aziraphale. You’ve proven there’s no point in us even trying. But there are ways you can be useful again.”_

_“I thought it was agreed you’d leave us alone.”_ He’d spoken to an archangel in such a way? _Us?_

_“Tacitly. Next time get it in writing.”_ Gabriel loomed, and all Aziraphale could think of was getting him away before Crowley returned. _“Come on back. For a chat. See if we can’t come to some sort of formal agreement.”_

Crowley had been scheduled to arrive at any moment. And while Michael surely passed along what occurred during Hell’s attempt at execution, there were no guarantees Gabriel wouldn’t try something else. Something worse. Even discorporating Crowley could’ve been disastrous. Aziraphale had therefore acquiesced.

If he’d known their plans, he would’ve fought them. He couldn’t recall anything about the burnishment, and perhaps that was a small mercy, but what all had been robbed from him?

“Crowley,” he repeated again. _Crowley_ had been robbed from him. _Crowley _drove a beautiful black car. _Crowley_ kept houseplants. _Crowley _was his first, his last, his best and his only love.

They had made him forget _Crowley_.

Aziraphale’s hand flew to his mouth as his stomach boiled with nausea. Crowley had left. He’d taken Aziraphale’s command at his word and walked out the door, possibly never to return. Why would he, after all? What if Aziraphale only remembered Crowley for these precious few moments before forgetting him all over again? Was there a way to undo what had been done? To scour off all the Heavenly polish and rediscover whatever of his faults had been hidden beneath?

Momentarily, Aziraphale considered sweeping all the sweet reminders away and letting himself forget. Pure cowardice, he knew, but if he was to live this half-life of faded memories without Crowley, perhaps such cowardice could be forgiven.

And yet, against the abysmal impulse, a few things solidified and settled into his mind as replanted trees tucking their roots into soft soil.

“Our side,” Aziraphale whispered. Yes. Their side. No wonder Heaven hadn’t come back to insist themselves upon him. His burnishment had been done as a last attempt to control an element they could never hope to understand. If he never returned, they’d write him off completely. Or so he hoped.

“Our side. Crowley.”

“Our side,” a voice from behind him repeated.

Aziraphale whipped around, mouth dropping in mixed surprise and elation when he spotted Crowley leaning against the counter.

Aziraphale wasted no time, crossing the distance between them and wrapping Crowley—_his_ demon—in what would have been a bone-breaking embrace had Crowley been human. Crowley coughed out a surprised breath, but buried his face in Aziraphale’s neck and brought his shaking arms up to wrap about Aziraphale’s waist.

Aziraphale squeezed his eyes shut. “You came back.”

“Never went far, really.” Crowley pulled back and tilted his head towards the terrarium. “If the apple hadn’t worked, and I had to resign myself to living without you, I was going to fucking do it in the fucking terrarium.”

“You were Raspberry the whole time?”

“You named your pet snake Raspberry?” Crowley snorted. “What am I on about, of course you did.”

He cupped Aziraphale’s jaw and pressed their mouths together. Aziraphale couldn’t reciprocate immediately, awash with the wonderful sensation of remembrance. He _had _kissed these lips before. Innumerable times. And hopefully would do so innumerable times more.

When Crowley made to draw away, Aziraphale clutched the front of his shirt tightly to keep him rooted in place.

“You awake, angel?” Crowley asked, almost too quiet to be heard.

“I am,” Aziraphale breathed. A frown stole across his face. “But not entirely. There’s so much I’ve lost, my darling. I don’t know if I shall ever recover it all.”

“Well, nice thing about immortality is we’ve got plenty of time to create new memories, haven’t we?” Crowley pressed his lips to Aziraphale’s forehead.

“Yes,” Aziraphale nodded. “Let’s begin immediately?” He conjured up a small smile. “Would you believe I’m absolutely famished.”

“Easily.” Crowley offered his arm, and Aziraphale tucked his hand into his demon’s elbow.

“You know, I do seem to recall the Savoy having a smashing afternoon tea service.”

“I recall you eating yourself into a stupor the first time you tasted their scones.”

Aziraphale beamed, practically able to taste strawberry preserves and clotted cream. “Well. They were awfully good.”

With a smile, Crowley drew him out of the bookshop and casually aimed them in the right direction.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and kudos are gratefully and happily accepted and encouraged.


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